White Reflection
by Vega62a
Summary: Years after the graduation, one day early in winter, Sachiko and Yumi take a walk in bad weather. What they find is a reflection of themselves, white as snow.


Author's notes:

Inspired by a song by the same name, by Two-mix.

This isn't really a bonus chapter for Fake—in fact, it doesn't really have much to do with Fake, other than that it follows the canon I set forth in that story, with regards to character and events. It shouldn't make much of a difference, though, if you haven't read it. Call it my penance to all of Fake's wonderful constant readers for not updating in a long time. This is actually because of my new SR fic, and my subsequent Mai-HiME writing marathon. And, you know, school eating my life. I wrote this in a couple hours I took off from writing HiME, because the idea wouldn't get out of my head, (you know how fast things like that come out) but I'm glad I did. I hope you will be too. I promise, more Fake soon. Promise promise.

Warnings:

Be ye warned, here be lesbians. (Yumi and Sachiko, if you please). There will be sex, but it will not be described (as per FFNet rules) and I don't really think saying "breasts" and a brief scene of becoming nude merits a rating of M. If somebody disagrees, I'll gladly change the rating. Also, I cuss once or twice. Because I can't not.

Words in italic parenthesis are essentially things that Sachiko has scribbled in the margins of the notebook she wrote this in. Not precisely author's notes, nor things she maybe didn't think were important enough to include in the narrative, but things that mattered to her all the same.

I use honorifics in this fiction because they become important towards the end. Remember, the most important honorific in Japanese is the absence thereof—it denotes an extreme closeness.

Also, remember that in Japanese, "San" is two syllables. That's not a mistake on my part, honest.

Two final notes: Firstly, The Japan Times _is _a real publisher in Japan. Not a newspaper, but a publisher of books. I didn't just make it up because I'm uncreative. Honest.

Second, thanks to my editor, Sumiregawa-nenene, for making this legible and fit for human consumption. I couldn't do this without her.

* * *

_Throwing off the sadness and the pain / in my heart I spread / these wings of courage you've given me_

* * *

White reflection

Somebody once told me that true courage comes from trusting others. From letting your guard down and allowing somebody to fill that void in your heart that all of us have, in spite of the fact that by doing this, you allow somebody access to your most important part. While they're in there, they can do anything to you: They can cradle you tenderly, yes, make you feel loved and warm and whole for a while; but they can do horrible, horrible things to you, too. I think most of us have far too much experience with the latter and nowhere near enough of the former. I'm sure some people would use that to try and prove that life is, in fact, pain, but I don't think so.

I think it means that life is dangerous. That's why it takes such true bravery to open yourself to it.

I used to be afraid of life. I used to keep myself closed off from the world, in a safe capsule that most people would call _high society._

My first book was published recently. I think that proves that I can write decently well, but I don't want to write things I don't care about. Fiction isn't my strong point, I think, because I don't like the thought of burying myself in a story again.

So I write things that are true to _my _life. That makes them not fiction, or at least I think so. You can find my work in the fiction aisle of a bookstore, yes, but you'll find _me _in that book. Not some character. Me. I write about my stories, and about the stories of my friends.

I think, then, that in light of my recent demi-success as a writer, that this story merits telling. Everybody has a _loss of chastity _(most people call it virginity, because virginity is an unpleasant term, which makes its loss something to celebrate—my family called it _chastity, _because it was something to be cherished) story, and I think a lot of them are interesting. Hopefully I'll collect more. I'd love to write about Sei's, but I don't think even Japan Times publishes things that far "out."

Yumi told me that was a joke when she read that. She laughed at it, too, so I suppose it was.

This isn't, though.

I think this is a story that merits telling. Or at least, merits writing.

So that's what I'll do.

I'll tell you about the snow.

* * *

We were in the middle of our walk when the snow first hit us. Hesitantly at first, it fluttered to the ground spaced wide, coming to rest where they'd be noticed: The grass beside us, the dark brown trunks of the trees ahead of us, and most notably, (to me anyway) on Yumi's nose. She didn't notice it at first, and I didn't point it out to her. Something about it was…attractive. Not in a sexual way, but in a way that was sort of endearing, as you might think of a close friend as endearing when she made you giggle. 

This didn't make me _giggle, _precisely. I don't think I know how to _giggle_, precisely. It's always seemed to me to be…lacking in class. That's not the right word. Tasteless. _I _didn't really have class anymore, not since I started living in what, compared to my old dwelling, amounted to little more than a shack with a fireplace. Writing doesn't really pay for much more than that.

What it did make me do was smile. Yumi says that's a fairly rare thing on me, so she noticed it.

"What is it, _Onee-sama?_" _(It's been almost a year and a half now, and I only just broke her of that habit. Considering how hard I worked to force that habit into her, I suppose that's a good thing, but I don't really think it's appropriate anymore. I suppose it was then.) _Yumi asked, eyeing my grin with one of her own growing on her face. I tried to look away and squelch the thing, but that image of the little snowflake resting on Yumi's nose, the only thing I could think of that could be paler than her delicate skin, was too much for me to do so immediately.

She caught me looking at her nose, and realized that she probably had something on it—she assumed, I'm sure, that it was something like a clump of makeup, and so tried to glimpse it herself, crossing her eyes intently, determined to get a look at it before she brushed it away. It was a very ladylike thing to do, on principle—to always look before you leap, so to speak—but on Yumi, it only added to the endearing _(I daresay it was even _cute_, though I don't think I can write that in a story without wanting to erase it) _expression on her face. As she concentrated even harder, her mouth thinned down to a small line, and her tongue began to poke out just slightly.

That was too much for me. I began to laugh, raising my hand to my mouth as quickly as I could to cover my teeth. She almost looked like a child when she did things like that, but that didn't bother me—Yumi's face was the thing about her I loved the most. It was the polar opposite of mine in many ways—of me, really, not merely my face—open and expressive, _(and pretty, yes. So very pretty) _it seemed as though it was impossible to hide anything on Yumi's face. Or maybe it was just that Yumi wasn't afraid to hide anything from her face. _(I suppose that's the habit that _she's _been trying to break _me _of.)_

"_Onee-sama_!" Yumi protested, finally brushing her nose off and wiping the now-melted snowflake away. I struggled to rein in my mirth, for fear of her almighty wrath, and put my hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Yumi-san," I said as best I could, forcing the corners of my lips back into a set line as best I could. It was hard. "That was just…," the image of her squinting crosseyed at her nose, her face done up in concentration and her tongue just barely sticking out of the corner of her mouth flashed back in front of my eyes, clear as day, and I began to laugh again. It wasn't loud, nor was it exuberant, but it was a laugh, and it seemed that in the years following what happened to me the summer after I graduated, (overcoming a nasty peptic ulcer being not the least of them—that took more doing than the doctor had me expecting at first) they were so rare that it still seemed a wonderful thing to me. Even now, when we had both graduated from university and were living our lives, more separately than I'd have liked.

Or maybe the fact that our lives _were _separate again was the reason that my laughter was so rare.

"_O-nee-sa-ma!_" Again, the attempt at chastising me, drawing out each syllable. Coupled with that image, now lodged firmly in front of my face, I suppose I lost it a little. "Please do not laugh at me!" But Yumi was beginning to feel my own good humor, so what could have been a fairly harsh rebuke became nothing more than mock indignation coming from that pretty, pretty face of hers.

A moment later, something cold and wet touched my nose. Without even thinking about it, I opened my eyes and tried to get a better look at what it was—it felt a little bit like a lick from the tiny tongue of a very small kitten. _(that's about the best defense I can put up.) _ Before I knew quite what I was doing, my eyes were completely crossed as well, and Yumi began to laugh. As soon as she did, I caught myself and straightened my face, with greater success this time, but the damage was already done, and though we began walking again, within a few seconds Yumi was in stitches. I suppose that's not hard to do for her. She has a lovely sense of humor. Though she teaches high school, and I can't imagine her doing anything else, she would make a wonderful stand-up comedian. At least, that's what I think. She tells me I've just not seen enough stand-up comics, that she could never compare to their humor. She's probably right, but I stand by my opinion.

We walked in silence for a few minutes, not feeling the burning urge to say anything, before the silence began to bother me. _(Always me, never her. Strange, that.) _"Yumi-san," I said, still proper then, still walking with a straight back and speaking in proper Japanese. _(Writing a novel fixed that about me quick enough—see? I just showed it there.) _"Tell me about how your first semester as a teacher went."

"Oh! It was wonderful!" she said brightly—she loved her job, and had from the moment she set foot in the school she now taught at. "It's a feeling like you wouldn't believe,_ Onee-sama. _It really is—I don't think anything in the world can quite match it."

"What—" I stopped as I felt something cold and wet flutter against my hair. I blinked twice. I had been preparing to ask her what she liked best about it. Small talk. Sometimes it seemed that was all people could do—all strangers could do. Since we'd met up a kilometer or more back, in the park, all we'd been doing was making small talk.

It had been too long.

I felt like I never had anything to say sometimes, but beyond that, it had been too long.

Wasn't that why I was writing now? So that I could maybe have something interesting to say? One of the horrible things about being rich was that I never seemed to have anything interesting to talk about. What would I have? I knew nothing of my father's work. I knew nothing of my mother's life. I knew nothing of the world at large; so what did that leave me? The weather.

One of the things they'd taught me at University, though, was this: Irony is a dish best served unexpectedly. A wonderful appetizer to a party nobody knew existed until the very moment you brought out that irony.

Irony, indeed. "What about snow on your nose? Does that feeling come close to teaching children?"

Yumi reddened a little, and then stopped where she was, and slowly, her lips curved up again. That wonderful smile, but this time there was no trace of humor in it.

"You've become a little braver since I saw you last," she said quietly, looking up at me. I stopped too, and turned full-on to face her. "I think that's wonderful." Something in her voice told me, though, that she was lying a little. _(Can you really lie a little? I think so. I think I've learned that you can lie in just about any way your little heart pleases.) _

The snow was beginning to come down around us in droves now, beginning to block out more and more of the rest of the world, beginning to soak the both of us more and more, but I didn't want to move quite yet. I walked closer to her and took one of her hands, smiling now.

"I haven't," I said, putting that hand in between both of mine, rubbing it to warm it up—she'd forgotten gloves, but in fairness, so had I. "I think I simply become stupider in cold weather."

"I don't think it's stupid at all, _Onee-sama,_" she said, taking my left hand in hers, so that now we warmed each other. "I just think you…."

I knew what she meant to say. She meant to say that I didn't need her as I used to. I meant to deny it. Neither of us did, though.

Instead, I let go with the hand that wasn't being held _(maybe you should just call it your right hand instead of being so ambiguous) _and tipped her chin up towards me. As I did, a piece of snow landed on her nose, not small anymore, but thick and fluffy. I wiped it off with one finger. "I think we should go home," I said. "We can talk there, if you want, but we're apt to catch a cold if we don't."

She nodded at me. She looked a little sad, and I think I knew why—it felt like her old friend, her old sister, was slipping away from her, and yet, for some reason, I felt no such sadness, which I think was proof positive that precisely the reverse was true. There would have been a time when her even thinking this would have brought me down, forced me into myself, but it was long past, and maybe that's why what happened that day hadn't happened earlier.

And so we started back down the path we'd come, holding hands. I smiled the whole way.

_(I suppose the reason I'm not going to try to sell this short story is because nobody would buy it. People want _coming-of-age-loss-of-virginity _stories that involve lots of drama, a big buildup to an even bigger climax, stupid things like that. If I were to sell this, I'd have to change it, to have some enormous scene in which one or both of us broke down in tears because she felt abandoned by me, and me realizing simultaneously that I was a lesbian and that the only way for me to comfort her was to _make mad, passionate love to her_. Healing sex, they would call it, to fix the wounds of separation, and it's _bullshit_ is what it is. That's not sex. That's a band-aid, and it never happens because it never works._

_Mm. I never used to swear. My speech has become rougher over the years. Yumi tells me I still speak like a lady, but I don't think a lady would have called it "mad, passionate love," let alone _"fucking," _nor would she have deemed "healing sex" to be "bullshit." They would have been, at best, _becoming intimate _and _a fallacy. _I still generally speak like that, but I kind of like being able to let myself go once and a while. Besides, I'm never going to publish this, so who's going to know?)_

* * *

We ran the last quarter-kilometer back, because by that time, the snow had become so thick that we were getting soaked through our jackets. The air seemed to glimmer now, the light which still shined through the clouds seeming to dance off of each individual snowflake. When we reached my front door, I fished my key out of my pocket rapidly—something that had taken some getting used to when I first moved out of that enormous mansion—and veritably forced the door open. We both entered as fast as we could, slipped as fast as we could out of our shoes. Still holding her hand, I led her to the living room, where I'd left the heater running, and it was only there that we stopped and my brain turned itself back on for the first time since we'd started sprinting. We both immediately crowded around the small space heater, huddled up in our jackets. 

"Wow," Yumi murmured, whatever she'd felt before seeming to have receded for now. "I never expected it to start coming down that strong. Is it even possible for it to snow like that?"

I shook my head—actually, I just shook—and looked at her. "I think if we'd been a couple minutes later, we might have found the door blocked by the snow."

"Yeah," she said, smiling at me. We fell into silence.

My living room has a single window, but the view is spectacular, so it's never really bothered me. My house is at the top of a hill that I don't have to climb—it comes up from a nearby river—and this window faces it, and we could see it while still warming ourselves by the heater.

"Take a look out the window," I murmured to Yumi, already knowing what was there, and not quite done thawing in any event.

Yumi took a tentative look at first, also not prepared to be cold again. From where we were squatting, we could only see the sky, a vast panorama of gray, crumbling into white fluff. But then Yumi stood up straight, and her face lit up, and she rushed to the window. I stayed where I was for a moment, and then I followed her. She moved aside a bit to give me some space, but I refused it, instead sidling up next to her and draping an arm around her shoulder protectively, shielding her from a little bit of the cold.

If the sky was a panorama, the hill and river beyond it were an artist's masterpiece. The entire section, mostly forested, was bare and covered in white, and the sun which had danced off of the individual snowflakes veritably shone off of the rapidly-growing piles of snow on the ground, off of the frozen lake, a gentle wall of ice.

"It's beautiful, _Onee-sama_," she murmured in awe. "Absolutely beautiful." The name bothered me of a sudden. Why was she still calling me _Onee-sama?_ Wasn't it obvious to her? Obvious that I wasn't her sister anymore? That she was grown up, and didn't need one of those anymore?

Why was I still calling her _Yumi-san_?

"Yumi-san…" I paused, stuck in my thoughts.

Wasn't it obvious to me that I didn't want her that far away from me? Those two syllables seemed to me an impossible distance.

And yet, I couldn't stop using them. Wasn't that brave yet. That little voice in the back of my head still told me, _don't let her too near. She's still dangerous. Everybody is dangerous. _

"Please," I murmured. "Don't call me that anymore, Yumi-san."

She gasped—a small, frightened noise—and looked straight at me, her face in that instant the perfect image of horror. For a moment, silence. Then, tensely, "What do you mean by that, _Onee-sama?_" Whether this was a deliberate act of disobedience—maybe one of Yumi's first—or simply a slip, I don't think I'll ever know. I don't think it matters. Her voice was lower now, more serious.

What _did _I mean by that?

I meant that she was grown up. She was my friend. I didn't want a little sister. I wanted Yumi.

No, that wasn't right. I didn't want her to keep calling me that because I felt like an insufficient person for her. _I _was the one who had gone to a college that her family couldn't afford. _I _was the one who had moved far away, deep into the bowels of Kyoto, to seclude myself for a living.

_I _was the one that had taken her lessons, her invaluable lessons about how to be…simply a _person_, rather than a Lady, and run. Did I deserve to be her big sister? Her _onee-sama_? Absolutely not.

Could I say that?

Absolutely not.

So I let it slide into silence.

Yumi didn't. Yumi said, "No, no. You don't get to do that, _Onee-sama_," more tensely than before. "You don't get to say that and then just stop there. Maybe that worked when we were eighteen, but we're not anymore. We're both adults now, _Onee-sama, _and I want to know what you meant when you said that."

Yumi had grown up. I had too, but she had more. She was ahead of me by at least two steps, as was often the case.

What _did _I mean by that?

I looked into her eyes. Her big, open eyes, her eyebrows, now creased with frustration and worry. Her eyes were as big and deep as the snow.

As the snow.

I looked out the window again. The snow was beginning to pile up already. If I went out in it, I'd probably have gotten my ankles wet. The sun still shone on it, and yet it didn't melt. Even when faced with its worst adversary, the one thing which could so easily destroy it, it held fast. Was this a metaphor for something in my life? Probably, with a little creative interpretation. I didn't really care to think on it.

In Yumi's eyes, I saw nothing but utter concern.

Reflected back, I have no idea what she saw. Seeing my reflection in her eyes, I saw nothing but my face, impassive as ever.

She, apparently, saw something else. Her expression softened and she smiled at me, and there was something in that smile that hadn't been there before, something more adult and less free-going and easy. Something that made me feel as though the bottom had dropped out of my stomach, emptying the contents all over the floor.

She reached up with one slender hand and gently took in it a lock of my hair. With her other, she creased it, and I saw that it came out of the ordeal wet.

"Just a snowflake that was too stubborn to melt," she smiled. "Kind of like you, don't you think?"

What did she mean by that?

I knew what she meant.

I knew what I had meant.

I didn't want her to call me _Onee-sama_. I didn't even want her to call me Sachiko-san.

Just Sachiko.

Just…

When I'd first seen her that day, I had felt this way, too. I had felt more complete than I had the hour before. I had run through the snow, held her hand, walked, talked about things that weren't the weather without even thinking about it.

I had thought before that Yumi was perhaps my antithesis. The person who made me whole by being my polar opposite. That was no longer true—the two of us had mellowed out considerably, admittedly in opposite directions. I had become more passionate, less restrained. She had become more restrained, calmer without having to resort to the training that that school had given her.

And yet, even so, I found myself more lost in her eyes, the longer I stared.

Was that simple friendship? Did simple friendship go that far?

Sisterhood didn't, that was certain.

Still smiling at me, she reached down with the hand that had cupped my hair, and put around my shoulders, pulled me close to her. She looked away from me then, and stared back out the window, the landscape thick and beautiful, shining.

"It's beautiful," she murmured. "Absolutely wonderful."

I knew she wasn't just talking about the scene.

She was talking about everything. All of it. All of it was wonderful.

We stayed like that for a long time, in front of that window, watching what I affectionally called "my backyard" become whiter and deeper by the minute. I'd have liked to stay there for longer _(I suppose saying_ forever _here sounds too campy, so I won't.) _ but, while the heater was warm, we were very, very cold, and wet on top of it.

Yumi sneezed, and that cut it for me. Broke the camel's back, as they say.

"You're taking a shower," I said. "Right now."

She looked at me with that same funny, adult look that I still didn't understand; _(not yet, anyway. I did, after all, still have my _chastity _virginity) _and said, "Please, feel free to shower first."

I blinked. "No, no, you're a guest in my house. Please use the shower before me. I'll start your clothes drying."

Her face screwed up as it often did when she was thinking, and after a few seconds, she consented. "I'll leave my clothes outside the bathroom, _O…_Sachiko-san."

Not even _that _was all right with me, but I let it be. Small steps.

Small steps, indeed.

* * *

I worked idly, my hands doing what my mind should have been doing. I should have been thinking about how she was looking at me. I should have been thinking a lot of things. I wasn't. I was in a state that a male friend of mine once described as the _doing _state, the state right before something you _know _is going to happen, when that something is extremely important. He usually cited it as the thing that happened right before sex—"When my girlfriend is in the next room, changing out of her clothes after a day at school, and I know she's changing into something sexy because of the way she's been looking at me all day, that's when it happens. If you can keep your hands busy, all thought vanishes from your head. Maybe it's anticipation. Maybe it's some animal instinct—_get ready, here I come_, that sort of thing. Whatever it is, it's a nice feeling. Almost as good as the act itself, for the few minutes of silence in an otherwise crowded head." 

It _was _a nice feeling.

About ten minutes after she'd gotten in, the water shut off. I shouted to Yumi that there was a towel hanging on the rack, and that I'd laid out a spare set of pajamas on my bed for her to wear. There was no answer, but I assume she'd heard me. You could hear a rat pass wind from anywhere in the house, it was so small. _(And strangely acoustic. Yumi told me I should say _hear a rat fart, _but I don't think I've sunk quite that low yet. Someday soon, maybe, but not yet.) _

The bathroom door opened. I made a note not to look in the hallway until I heard my bedroom door close, simply warming my hands over the heater, allowing my mind to move again.

It didn't move fast, though, until I realized that I had waited there like that almost a minute. I heard Yumi take a deep breath from the hall.

I looked up just as she entered the living room.

She was completely naked. Her white skin shone a little like the snow, and for a moment, I was rendered nearly breathless by how smooth and perfect it was. She started walking towards me, and I saw the gooseflesh standing up on her skin, and then I looked lower, and saw another sign that it was cold. They were small but they were firm, and…

Yes, yes it was cold.

I stood up and whispered, "Yumi, what are you…"

She stopped less than half a meter away from me. I could smell the sweet scent of the shampoo she'd used—mine—and the soap. Her cheeks were bright red, and it certainly was not the fault of the heater.

"You said," she said, her voice still deeper, throatier this time, her eyes looking at me the same way they had before, "that you didn't want me to call you _Onee-sama _anymore. Is this…is this why?"

It almost sounded subservient to me for a moment, but then I looked at her face, and read what was on it like a book:

It was hope. It was fear. The two tended to go hand in hand.

She was doing what I couldn't do. She was opening herself up to me and taking a chance with something so infinitely fragile.

I knew exactly why I didn't want her to call me that anymore. I knew what I had meant.

This was precisely it.

_(Another reason I could never sell this story—there's no coming out drama. There was none for me. I had never been with a man or a woman before; I had come close with those evil old men from the parties, and with Suguru but I had ducked out or they had, always near the big, important part. I think the fact that I was once in love with Suguru makes it clear that I am bisexual, but again, I don't think it matters, so it doesn't go in here, even though the thoughts did occur to me.)_

"How…do we do this?" I asked, my voice turning throaty too. Yumi smiled at me—she told me later that she'd been with a woman once before, in college, when she'd been feeling awful—and closed the rest of the space with me, cupped my jaw in her hand, and—standing on her toes, no less—brought my head down and kissed me. Her lips were soft, warm, just as I remembered them; wonderful. Her tongue darted into my mouth, and she started to peel the wet clothing off of me. I shivered as she did.

After that…

After that, we made a reflection as white as the snow for a while.

* * *

After we had finished, I asked Yumi if she would feel okay just calling me _Sachiko. _She laughed and told me that she would if I would call her _Yumi. _If that was, you know, okay by me. If I was comfortable with that, on that comfort zone with her. It occurred to me that while she was saying this my head was resting on her left breast. That made me laugh, and she laughed too, like somebody whose joke has just been "gotten." 

She moved in a few days later. We make a modest living now, between the two of us, but we haven't moved out.

After all, this place is too beautiful in the winter.

* * *

A/N: I was considering this to be an alternate ending to Fake in which I simply wrote, "Okay, you know what? Fuck it. Rocks fall, and everyone dies. The end." But I chose to give Sachiko a happy ending instead. 

…

I jest. Rocks would be too inelegant.

I jest again. I love writing Fake.

The spoiler of this story: Sachiko doesn't die at the end of Fake. Sorry, guys, to ruin that experience for you.

As always, thanks for reading!


End file.
